Fidelity Investments Launches Crypto Custody Service – Details

CEO of Fidelity Investments, Abigail Johnson, revealed the development in an interview with the Financial Times published on Oct. 18. Johnson said that the company is ready to roll out its crypto custody business.

Fidelity had previously indicated that it would provide an enterprise-grade crypto custody service to hedge funds, family offices and financial advisors. Johnson called that kind of service nascent and not developed. He said:

“There are people out there with significant amounts of wealth in cryptocurrencies, probably Bitcoin, and they’re looking for somebody to hold those coins for them because in the event of their passing — which is going to happen at some point or another — you’ve got to have a plan to be able to get those coins to somebody else.”

On Coinbase’s custody offering, Johnson argued that Coinbase “is still a company that most people had never heard of, and they don’t have the existing relationships with the independent advisers.”

Fidelity is venturing into crypto trading

Recently, personal investing president of Fidelity Investments,Kathleen Murphy, said the firm does not offer cryptocurrencies on retail trading platforms to protect its clients. She was asked when she expects users to trade crypto meaningfully on Fidelity’s platform and Murphy replied:

“You know, we’re really careful about that. So while we embrace crypto in terms of trying to understand it and be innovative and thoughtful… We’re also very careful about where we offer those types of things, so they’re not offered broadly on the retail platform. We want to be very careful about making sure that investors who really aren’t institutional investors […] don’t make a mistake with cryptocurrency.”